National Television

Architectural discourse in the 1980s was often focused on the close readings of structures and materials and their syntactic relationships. Our host building in Culver City was one such project: raw, standard materials assembled in a composition employing juxtaposition in a scheme of geometric complexity. In the original distribution of materials -- CMU, metal panels, lighting, OSB -- a constructional logic of set dimensions and geometries underlay design decisions. Assemblies of these components also performed as autonomous elements. For example, the CMU wall stands apart from its connections, remaining oppositional to other components. The premise of our tenant improvement project was to insinuate this constellation of materialities with an architecture that likewise remains aloof from the parts put in play 20 years previously. New workstations, screens and panels form a seamless ribbon of dematerialized, decomponentized surfaces. The panel system, made of synthetically coated routed MDF, flows around the existing elements. These surfaces are removed from the logic of their host through the application of non-patterned patterns: irrepetitive images posterized and recombined to produce levels of rout passes on the panels: some bas-relief, some medium, some penetrating. No tiling of images occurs; seams are not moments of ironic tension but happenstance occasions. In one half of the existing warehouse materiality is expressed in an array of raw, natural colors, in the other, drywall and paint present a mute background. Our ribbons of panels and workstations reverse this condition: a polychromatic scheme on the mute half, desaturating as it travels to the opposite side. In this project we promote a picturesque stroll through the analytical fallout of postmodernism.